Like a Hammer - Poets on Mass Incarceration

Like A Hammer is an anthology of poems that unearths the shared traumas produced by America's incarceration system.



These powerful poems of witness seek to address the oppressive systems that make up the US prison-industrial complex, revealing cracks in a criminal punishment system that too often appears unchangeable. The impacts of that system reverberate through lives and across generations. The poets gathered here aim to foreground the real experiences of people touched by the system, to upend dominant narratives, shine light on injustice, and act as a fulcrum around which to organize communities in support of change.

Like A Hammer explores how art and imagination can serve as vehicles for endurance, offering us the hope to envision a better future.

Contributors include: Hanif Abdurraqib, Rhionna Anderson, Brian Batchelor, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Marina Bueno, Cody Bruce, Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, Natalie Diaz, Tongo Eisen-Martin, Nikky Finney, Kennedy A. Gisege, Gustavo Guerra, Jessica Hill, Vicki Hicks, Randall Horton, Sandra Jackson, Catherine LaFleur, Ada Limón, Sarah Lynn Maatsch, Christopher Malec, Eduardo Martinez, John Murillo, Angel Nafis, Kenneth Nadeau, Leeann Parker, James Pearl, Christina Pernini, Roque Raquel Salas Rivera, Patrick Rosal, Nicole Sealey, Evie Shockley, Patricia Smith, Sin á Tes Souhaits, Vanessa Angélica Villarreal, Erica "Ewok" Walker, Candace Williams, and SHE>i

List of contents

Foreword: The Army of the Wronged, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

Introduction, Diana Marie Delgado

I. Time Rules this Empire: Where Clocks Stand Still 

: .OR. THIS MALUS THING NEVER TO BE CONFUSED WITH JUSTICE, Randall Horton

ALL THE TV SHOWS ARE ABOUT COPS, Hanif Abdurraqib

TRAP noun. \¿trap\, Sin á Tes Souhaits

Marriage, Rhionna Anderson

WHICH IS IT?, Christopher Malec

BLOOD HISTORY, Reginald Dwayne Betts

Architect 1, Vanessa Angélica Villarreal

Lost, Sandra Jackson

Under Correction I, Natalie Diaz

Behind the Wall, Christina Pernini

II. Be Careful How You Speak about Rainbows: Beauty & Grace

A.G.A.M., Eduardo Martinez

Bloom, Catherine LaFleur

Eclogue: A Field Guide and Cure, Marcelo Hernandez Castillo

Scattered like Yellow Feathers, Kennedy Gisege

En las primeras décadas del nuevo siglo, Raquel Salas Rivera

In the first decades of the new century, Raquel Salas Rivera

Knees Next to Their Wallets, Tongo Eisen-Martin

D.O.C. “department of castration,” Pat Ewok

III. The Bill is Past Due: The Hustle

10 Toes Down, Sin á Tes Souhaits

If I were a Boy, Leeann Parker

The Ballad of Stagolee, or Variation on a Theme by Sterling A. Brown with a Slight Nod to Etheridge Knight, John Murillo 

Political Arithmetic, Brian Batchelor 

black, body, Candace Williams

ALL THE TV SHOWS ARE ABOUT COPS, Hanif Abdurraquib

Everything I Know About Horses, Kenneth Nadeau

IV: American Inferno: Inside the Cell

Free, Leeann Parker

american inferno, Evie Shockley

ORDER’S UP, Christopher Malec

FLASHBACK TO THE CELL, Randall Horton

Devour , Catherine LaFleur

Cellfish, SHE>i

Break from Madness, Kennedy A. Gisege

cinderblock calendars, Eduardo Martinez

Under Correction II, Natalie Diaz

ONLY ONE CLOCK, Patricia Smith

V. What Is Caged Is Also Kept from Us: The People

The First Day, Vicki Hicks

BUT THE PHONE RINGS SOMETIMES, Patricia Smith

What is Caged is Also Kept From Us, Ada Limón

When Every Word is a Name, Reginald Dwayne Betts

Reasons, Jessica Hill

Sometimes I Wonder if God Really Fuck With Me Like That, Sin á Tes Souhaits

can’t unsee, Evie Shockley

Identity of a Prisoner, Cody Bruce

My Father the Sahib, James Pearl

Gustavo Guerra, Vacillating

Click!, Sarah Lynn Maatsch

Ghazal to Open Cages, Angel Nafis

VI. The Nakedness Dark Demands: Surveillance and Shapeshifting

Architect 3, Vanessa Angélica Villarreal

Pages Thirteen to Twenty-One from The Ferguson Report: An Erasure, Nicole Sealey

Brutality, Marina Bueno

Under Correction III, Natalie Diaz

Sonnet Triptych, Marcelo Hernandez Castillo 

La promiscuidad tan indeseable, Roque Raquel Salas Rivera 

Such undesirable promiscuity, Roque Raquel Salas Rivera 

VII. Like A Hammer Across the Page: The Poor, Friendless & Black

Black Boy with Cow, A Still Life, Nikky Finney

Notes

Acknowledgments

Biographies

About the author

Diana Marie Delgado is a poet, editor, playwright, and author of Tracing the Horse (BOA Editions, 2019) and Late-Night Talks with Men I Think I Trust (Center for Book Arts, 2015). With extensive experience in executive leadership, Delgado is committed to uplifting writers and cultivating vibrant creative communities. She holds degrees from UC Riverside and Columbia University's MFA program in poetry and resides in Tucson, Arizona.



Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor is the author of Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership, a semi-finalist for the 2019 National Book Award and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History in 2020, and From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation, winner of the Lannan Cultural Freedom Award for an Especially Notable Book in 2016. She is also editor of How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective, which won the Lambda Literary Award for LGBQT nonfiction in 2018. She is a 2021 MacArthur Foundation Fellow. Taylor is a contributing writer at The New Yorker, a former contributing opinion writer for The New York Times, and her writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Boston Review, Paris Review, Guardian, The Nation, Jacobin, and Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society, among others. Taylor is Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University.

Product details

• Assisted by: Diana Marie Delgado (Editor), Taylor Keeanga-Yamahtta (Foreword)
• Publisher: Ingram Publishers Services
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 04.03.2025
• EAN: 9798888904466
• ISBN: 979-8-88890-446-6
• Illustrations: Illustrationen, nicht spezifiziert
• Subjects: Fiction > Poetry, drama; POETRY / Anthologies (multiple authors), Poetry anthologies (various poets)